Maybe Bakersfield College can breathe a sigh of relief.
Maybe. However, BC is still subject to the accreditation process, and fresh recommendations have been put forward. According to BC President William Andrews, BC submitted to an obligatory self-study, which was rendered in an official written report.
This report was sent to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. BC’s self-study report and the accreditation team’s report of its Oct. 23-26, 2006 visit were both examined by WASC.
The Commission sent BC a letter Jan. 31, 2007 stating that the Commission reinstated BC’s accreditation after delving into the report’s contents. However, the reaffirmation came with the stipulation that BC draw up an official “Progress Report,” to be issued to the Commission by Oct. 15, 2007. After receiving and examining this report, BC will be subject to another accreditation team visit in either November or December 2007.
“When the accreditation team comes, they will be validating our self study,” Andrews said. Noted in Andrews’ “Statement of Progress Report Preparation,” which was included in the Aug. 23, 2007 drafted progress report to be submitted to WASC by Oct. 15, was mention of an ameliorated Commission letter sent to BC on March 22, 2007. This “corrected letter” included specific college recommendations not included in the Jan. 31 communique; the Jan. 31 letter contained only district-wide recommendations sans specific college recommendations. According to Andrews’ written statement, the College Council has created committees to work on each recommendation; the committees began attacking the issues in late August.
“Stemming from the self study are 85 planning agendas,” Andrews said.
The teams assigned to attack the recommendation issues and planning strategies include Andrews, Interim Vice Chancellor of Human Resources Victor Collins, Vice Chancellor of Education Services Greg Chamberlain, Chief Financial Officer Tom Burke, and many other administrators as well as many KCCD faculty and staff.
The first of the added written recommendations stated that for the college to fulfill its planning processes, the college must institute a training program on the many planning processes, particularly in the utilization of data in unit planning and program reviews and put forth a timeline with definite deadlines to help complete a program of planning an analysis. The plan to satisfy the recommendation includes a “unit plan development with educational master plan update processes,” a program review, as well as a “faculty and classified staff position requests prioritization process.” Further solutions to this recommendation include an “institutional level SLO assessment plan, the student learning outcomes implementation plan, and the class schedule development process plan.”
Recommendation two was not listed on the official progress report, but recommendation three stated in essence that the district strategic plan be employed to properly point the college’s goals and its educational master plan. The report’s answer to this recommendation was to state that the president decided to stall the fruition of the Bakersfield College Strategic Plan in 2006-07 to await the results of two educational probes. One study was a nationwide effort termed the “Foundations of Excellence,” which is an examination of the rigors of the student’s initial college experience. The other academic probe was done by the National Center for Developmental Education (NCDE) that delves into the college’s strategies for essential skills teaching. The conclusion of these studies will influence college directives and will be considered in budget-governed future planning processes. The report’s further response to recommendation three is for the college to undertake an officially sanctioned “strategic plan” for 2007-08. Ann Morgan, head director of the Institutional Research and Planning, is at the head of this venture.
KCCD’s own strategic plan was accepted by the Board of Trustees Sept. 7, 2006. KCCD employees were advised of the goals of this plan in April 2007. A workshop aimed at educating employees on the particulars of the KCCD planned projects will be held December 2007. In the meantime, groups have been formed consisting of administrators and faculty to tackle each of the six KCCD tentative plans, and the groups started meeting in Spring 2007.
Recommendation four calls upon the college to form a cohesive network between all the projects covering curriculum, budgeting, program review, assessment, and campus planning. This entails extensive communication between all groups involved in these areas by consistently conveying updated data on programs, finances, and other concerns to active planners. The strategic plan crafted to remedy this recommendation was intentionally stalled because of the studies involving the “Foundations of Excellence” and the National Center for Developmental Education. In 2006-07, in accordance with Foundations of Excellence and California State University, Bakersfield, nine spheres of academic achievement were explored. The National Center for Development Education made visits to the college during the spring and summer 2007 semesters to probe the college’s developmental education program, which entailed examining student services as well as instructional and administrative support of students. The report indicated the honing of an educational master plan with consistent reviews and updates by way of finance and unit plan processes. Five more recommendations were listed on the progress report, which is very likely to be accepted by the Board of Trustees at their meeting Oct. 4, 2007.
Andrews believes the added recommendations are fair, and there will always be areas in which a college can improve. Associate Chancellor of Educational Services Greg Chamberlain said, “We want an outside group to tell us what we’ve done well. WASC will be very pleased to see what we’ve accomplished.”